Roeder Blasts His Side's Defending

Norwich City manager Glenn Roeder blasted his side's defending in today's 3-2 defeat at home to Swansea City.

The Canaries opened the scoring after a good start to the match, but the Swans responded with a 43rd minute equaliser before scoring 2 goals in 2 minutes to take the lead.

Norwich then got one back to make it 3-2 but the Swans held out to claim 3 more points which sees them rise up to 7th in the League.

Roeder told First News:

'It was just diabolically poor play and poor defending, we work on set plays a lot both in an attacking mode and as far as defending set plays are concerned.

The player who is asked to play in front or level with the near post should ever let anyone get in front of you - you make sure your body shape is right, you see the ball and you see what's going on behind you. If anyone tries to break in front of you, you block him and you remain in front of that first attacking player and we didn't do that.

'We played some very good football today, people won't remember that - they'll remember five or six minutes when Swansea scored three goals and they will go away with the memory.

That is life, that's how it is in football but I have to look deeper than that. We deservedly took the lead, we could have been in front before that and we could have scored more than one goal in the first half, and then two minutes before half-time we concede a goal by them getting behind us.

Jason Scotland made a terrific run, he took Doherty into the near post and it was absolutely perfect.

'Within two minutes of the second half we've done what we've done too often this year, we've shot ourselves in the foot and given ourselves a mountain to climb.'

Swansea City will be hoping to maintain their unbeaten League run at home on Friday when Birmingham visit the Liberty Stadium.